1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed to a sheet feeding apparatus for use in an image forming device such as a facsimile machine, an image scanner, a copier, or other image forming device which utilizes sheets. More particularly, the present invention is directed to a sheet feeding apparatus which can supply sheets to an image forming device.
2. Discussion of the Background
An image forming device, such as a facsimile machine, an image scanner, a copier. etc., may often include or connect to a sheet feeding unit to feed sheets individually to the image forming device. Such a sheet feeding unit may include a sheet cassette, a pick-up roller and a pair of feeding rollers. The sheet cassette may typically include a bottom board, a spring device for raising the bottom board, a pair of side fences for setting a stack of sheets at a predetermined position, and a separator. The stack of sheets is lifted up by the bottom board and spring device and sheets are fed from the pick-up roller and feeding rollers to the image forming apparatus one by one.
With such a sheet feeding unit, an upper sheet of the stack of sheets is separated by the pick-up roller and the separator and the separated sheet is then transferred to the feeding rollers. However, in such a sheet feeding operation the separated sheet may be transferred to the sheet feeding rollers with a slight skew if, for example, the separated sheet becomes slightly crumpled or crimped, which may result for several reasons, for example if the pick-up position is offset, the pick-up roller is slightly offset or not functioning properly, an obstruction is in the feed path. etc. As a result, if a separated sheet is fed with such a skew, the fed sheet reaches the feeding rollers with the skew, i.e., one leading corner of the fed sheet is slightly ahead of the other leading corner of the fed sheet so that the leading edge of the fed sheet is not parallel to the feeding roller as it reaches the feeding rollers.
As a result of such an offset skew in the feeding of the separated paper sheet, such a fed paper sheet will not be properly printed on or may cause a paper jam.